From Farm House to the White House Part 58

His tour through the New England States was attended with every demonstration of honor that love and confidence could devise. At Boston the president's well-known punctuality set aside all conventional rules, and a.s.serted its superiority. A company of cavalry volunteered to escort him to Salem. The time appointed to start was 8 o'clock in the morning. When the Old South clock struck the hour, the escort had not appeared; nevertheless Was.h.i.+ngton started, and reached Charles River bridge before the cavalry overtook him. The commander of the cavalry once belonged to Was.h.i.+ngton's "military family," and the latter turned to him and said:

"Major, I thought you had been too long in my family not to know when it was eight o'clock."

At Philadelphia, to which place the seat of government was removed in 1790, the president frequently entertained members of Congress at his own table. They soon learned that there was no waiting for guests in his mansion. Precisely at the hour, Was.h.i.+ngton took his seat at the table, whether guests had arrived or not. One day a member came in ten minutes after the family were seated at the dining table. The president greeted him with the remark: "We are punctual here."

He arranged with a gentleman to meet him with reference to the purchase of a pair of horses. He named the hour. The owner of the horses was ten minutes behind the time, and he found the president engaged with other parties. It was a whole week before he was able to see the president again. The latter taught the dilatory man an important lesson.

At Philadelphia, a house belonging to Robert Morris, the national financier, was rented, and converted into a presidential mansion as imposing and elegant, for that day, as the "White House" at Was.h.i.+ngton is for our day. It was not contemplated to make Philadelphia the permanent seat of government. Was.h.i.+ngton thought the capital should be located on the Potomac, and it was respect for his judgment especially that located it where it is.

One Reuben Rouzy owed Was.h.i.+ngton a thousand pounds. An agent of the president, without his knowledge, brought an action against Rouzy for the money, in consequence of which he was lodged in jail. A friend of the debtor suggested that Was.h.i.+ngton might know nothing of the affair, whereupon Rouzy sent a pet.i.tion to the president for his release. The next post brought an order for his release, with a full discharge, and a severe reprimand to the agent.

Rouzy was restored to his family, who ever afterwards remembered their "beloved Was.h.i.+ngton" in their daily prayers. Providence smiled upon the debtor, so that in a few years he offered the whole amount, with interest, to Was.h.i.+ngton.

"The debt is already discharged," said Was.h.i.+ngton.

"The debt of my family to you, the preserver of their parent, can never be discharged," answered Rouzy. "I insist upon your taking it."

"I will receive it only upon one condition," added the president.

"And what is that?"

"That I may divide it among your children," replied Was.h.i.+ngton.

The affair was finally settled on this basis, and the amount was divided at once among the children.

The success of his first presidential term created the universal desire that he should serve a second term.

"It is impossible; my private business demands my attention," he said to Jefferson.

"Public business is more important," suggested Jefferson. "Besides, the confidence of the whole Union is centred in you."

"I long for home and rest," retorted Was.h.i.+ngton. "I am wearing out with public service."

"I trust and pray G.o.d that you will determine to make a further sacrifice of your tranquility and happiness to the public good,"

remarked Hamilton, joining in the plea for a second term of service.

"It will be time enough for you to have a successor when it shall please G.o.d to call you from this world," said Robert Morris; thus limiting the demands of his country only by the demand of death.

His objections were overcome, and he was unanimously elected to a second term, and was inaugurated March 4, 1793, in Philadelphia.

His second presidential term proved equally successful with the first.

Serious difficulties with England, France, and Spain were settled; a treaty with the Indian tribes was affected, and a humane policy adopted towards them. The mechanic arts, agriculture, manufactures, and internal improvements, advanced rapidly under his administration. Domestic troubles disappeared, and peace and harmony prevailed throughout the land; in view of which, Jefferson said:

"Never did nature and fortune combine more perfectly to make a man great and to place him in the same constellation with whatever worthies have merited from man an everlasting remembrance."

During his presidency he made a tour through the Southern States. His arrangement for the same furnishes a remarkable ill.u.s.tration of the order and punctuality for which he was known from boyhood. Thinking that the heads of the several State departments might have occasion to write to him, he wrote out his route thus:

"I shall be, on the eighth of April, at Fredericksburg; the eleventh, at Richmond; the fourteenth, at Petersburg; the sixteenth, at Halifax; the eighteenth, at Tarborough; the twentieth, at Newtown;" and thus on to the end, a journey of nineteen hundred miles.

Custis says: "His punctuality on that long journey astonished every one.

Scarcely would the artillery-men unlimber the cannon when the order would be given, 'Light your matches; the white chariot is in full view!'" Was.h.i.+ngton rode in a white chariot.

His industry, which had become proverbial, enabled him to perform a great amount of work. General Henry Lee once said to him:

"Mr. President, we are amazed at the amount of work you are able to accomplish."

"I rise at four o'clock, sir, and a great deal of the work I perform is done while others are asleep," was Was.h.i.+ngton's reply.

At the same time his _thoroughness_ and method appeared in everything.

Mr. Sparks says:

"During his presidency it was likewise his custom to subject the treasury reports and accompanying doc.u.ments to the process of tutelar condensation, with a vast expenditure of labor and patience."

Another biographer says:

"His accounts, while engaged in the service of his country, were so accurately kept, that to this hour they are an example held up before the nations."

In all these things the reader must note that "the boy is father of the man."

Under his administration there was no demand, as now, for "civil service reform." His nearest relative and best friend enjoyed no advantage over others for position. Real qualifications and experience for office he required. Alluding to the severity with which he treated the idea of giving friends and favorites position, a public man remarked:

"It is unfortunate to be a Virginian."

At the close of his long service, he wrote:

"In every nomination to office, I have endeavored, as far as my own knowledge extended, or information could be obtained, to make fitness of character my primary object."

At one time two applicants for an important office presented their appeals, through friends. One of them was an intimate friend of the president, often at his table. The other was a political enemy, though a man of experience. No one really expected that his political enemy would be appointed, but he was.

"Your appointment was unjust," a person dared to say to Was.h.i.+ngton.

"I receive my friend with a cordial welcome," answered Was.h.i.+ngton. "He is welcome to my house and welcome to my heart; but, with all his good qualities, he is not a man of business. His opponent is, with all his political hostility to me, a man of business. My private feelings have nothing to do with this case. I am not George Was.h.i.+ngton, but President of the United States; as George Was.h.i.+ngton, I would do this man any kindness in my power; but as President of the United States, I can do nothing."

In 1793 Was.h.i.+ngton was deeply affected by the news of Lafayette's exile and incarceration in Germany. He took measures at once to secure his release, if possible, and sent him a thousand guineas. Lafayette's son, who was named after the American general, George Was.h.i.+ngton Lafayette, came to this country, accompanied by his tutor, when his father was driven into exile. After the close of Was.h.i.+ngton's public life, young Lafayette became a member of his family at Mount Vernon. His father was not liberated until 1797.

The following maxims, gleaned from his prolific writings, disclose the principles which governed his actions in public life, and at the same time they magnify his ability as a writer. When we reflect that his schooldays embraced instruction only in reading, writing, and arithmetic, to which he added surveying later, the clearness and elegance of his style become a matter of surprise. His epistolary correspondence is a model to all who would attain excellence in the art; and his grasp of thought and practical view of government and science, are unsurpa.s.sed by any statesman. Of the large number of notable extracts we might collect from his writings, we have s.p.a.ce for a few only, as follows:

"Our political system may be compared to the mechanism of a clock, and we should derive a lesson from it; for it answers no good purpose to keep the smaller wheels in order if the greater one, which is the support and prime mover of the whole, is neglected."

"Common danger brought the States into confederacy; and on their union our safety and importance depend."

"Remember that actions, and not the commission, make the officer. More is expected from him than the t.i.tle."

"Knowledge is, in every country, the surest basis of public happiness."

"True friends.h.i.+p is a plant of slow growth, and must undergo and withstand the shocks of adversity before it is ent.i.tled to the appellation."

"To share the common lot, and partic.i.p.ate in conveniences which the army, from the peculiarity of our circ.u.mstances, are obliged to undergo, has with me, been a fundamental principle."